When watch tv thingy about ice and year with, oh a shooting star, my roommate friend and mom in that city what's it called, Go Broncos, they yammered about the brain or the brain on eggs or polar T-rav to the 3rd.

haha, j/k

When I watched "Antarctica; A Year on Ice" with my mom and Jerod, in Denver I remember them talking about a mental condition called Polar T3 syndrome.

It seems like people are getting to be a bit more irritable, forgetful, a little out of it, and having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much. So I decided to research Polar T3 syndrome. It's hard to know if some people might be suffering a bit from PT3 or if it's just the result of a long, hard season where everyone is quite exhausted. I notice I make more typos when I'm going through daily checks. But it's hard to know if that's just from being generally exhausted and often having cold/slow fingers from being outside. I think overall I've done a good job of fighting off some of these issues by exercising, eating well, getting social interaction off-base by calling people, and keeping my mind stimulated by working on my paper as opposed to just always watching movies.

Anyways, I found the Polar T3 syndrome pretty interesting. It has to do with a change in the amount of a thyroid hormone (T3) that can be caused by prolonged emotional and physical stress. A similar Thyroid problem (with T4) can cause major obesity. Types of stress that can cause this are having too much sunlight, too much darkness, the cold, a non-changing environment, limited and unvaried social interactions, and altitude. It's called Polar T3 b/c it is most common in polar environments where these stresses are more common and can be compounded. The thyroid helps some mammals, like bears for example, go into something called torpor, which is similar to hibernation, but not complete hibernation. Bears will sleep for a long period but still wake up at times in the winter. By going into torpor, you slow down the body's physical and mental processes in order to save energy so that you can make it through a long, dark winter when it can be impossible to find resources. I didn't do any research on this, but there's a good chance early humans in the higher latitudes may have gone into something like torpor. Sleeping/near sleeping for days at a time. If it's too cold, dark, etc to hunt and all plants are covered in snow, it's best to just save your energy until spring. The Polar T3 syndrome may be a bit of a response of the thyroid to cold and dark as sort of a prep for something similar to torpor. We may not need it anymore as a species with our heated houses, grocery stores, and electric lights, but that doesn't mean it's still not in our instinctual brain.

I found a couple of good articles on Polar T3 syndrome as well as one very amusing blog on it by a baker at McMurdo. I copied in some of the highlights, but I also provided the links in case you want to read more. The McMurdo blog might well be worth reading the whole thing.

The austral winter in Antarctica has long been associated with reports of depression, irritability, aggressive behavior, insomnia, difficulty in concentration and memory, absentmindedness, and the occurrence of mild fugue states known as "long-eye" or the "antarctic stare" (Palmai 1963; Palinkas, Cravalho, and Browner 1995). During the 1989 winter season at McMurdo Station, for instance, 64.1 percent of the winter-over crew members interviewed reported some problem with sleep over the winter; 62.1 percent reported feeling depressed; 47.6 percent reported feeling more irritable than usual; and 51.5 percent reported difficulty with concentration or memory (Palinkas 1992). Collectively, these symptoms are referred to as the "Winter-Over Syndrome" (Strange and Youngman 1971).

Despite decades of research, the etiology of the Winter-Over Syndrome has not been clearly identified. In many instances, these symptoms can be attributed to characteristics of the social environment, including the absence of face-to-face social interaction and support associated with the prolonged isolation from family and friends (Palinkas 1992), the absence of social stimulation and opportunities to disengage from stressful social situations associated with the experience of confinement with the same small group of individuals, and increased work demands at certain times of the winter season (Palinkas et al. in press). On the other hand, the role of certain environmental factors including the lack of environmental stimulation and prolonged exposure to cold temperatures and constant darkness is suggested by the observation that winter-over personnel experience a significant increase in the prevalence of subsyndromal seasonal affective disorder (S-SAD) during the austral winter and that this increase appears to be associated with increasing latitude and, hence, exposure to prolonged darkness (Palinkas, Houseal, and Rosenthal 1996).

Alterations in thyroid hormone functions similar to those reported by Reed and colleagues during the austral winter in Antarctica (Reed et al. 1986) are also known to be associated with increased depressive symptomatology and disruption of cognitive performance (Gold, Pottash, and Extein 1981). Known as the Polar T₃Syndrome, these alterations share many of the same characteristics of subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH), including elevated thyrotropin-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels and/or enhanced TSH response to thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH) stimulation. Subclinical hypothyroidism is found in 8 to 17 percent of depressed patients vs. 5 percent of the general population (Haggerty and Prange 1995).

https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf98106/98106htm/nsf98106h2.html

Polar T₃ syndrome

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Polar T₃ syndrome is a condition found in polar explorers, caused by a reduction in levels of the thyroid hormone T₃.^[1]^[2] Its effects include forgetfulness,cognitive impairment and mood disturbances. It can exhibit itself in a fugue state known as the Antarctic stare.^[3]^[4]^[5]

It is regarded as one of the contributory causes of winter-over syndrome.^[3]

Last night like, well, almost every night of the season, I put my earbud-style headphones on to listen to some music while I edited my novel, The War’s End.

I put the “R” earbud in my right ear.

I put the “L” earbud in my mouth.

Yes, it’s that time of the season. T3, formerly called polar madness, is setting in.

For those of you just joining us, Polar T3 syndrome is not something I made up, as a reader of this blog once theorized. Heck, NASA has studied it as a possible analog to psychological problems that might arise on long space missions.

In simple terms, Polar T3 syndrome, at least as I understand it, is a combination of issues that arise from lack of sunlight in winter and 24/7 sunlight in summer, compromised thyroid function due to constant exposure to low temperatures (sort of putting our bodies into hibernation) and sheer bloody cabin fever, seeing the same people and places day in and day out, doing largely the same tasks.

Polar T3’s most common symptoms are weight gain, fatigue, depression, irritability, headaches and sleep disturbances.

From the NASA folks: “Expeditioners have also experienced impaired cognition such as: reduced accuracy and short-term memory, increased response time for cognitive tasks and spontaneous fugue states; the latter of which has often been referred to as “the Antarctic stare.”

Oh yeah. Been there. Saw that. Sucked on an earbud for a minute before realizing something was awry.

Most of us take Vitamin D3 supplements, which are supposed to mitigate T3, but nearly everyone I know is experiencing some degree of cognitive impairment. And every mealtime, I can spot at least a couple people staring off into an undefined middle distance, unaware of anything around them.

I believe part of T3’s manifestation is our brains creating something new from what we’ve seen time and time again to satisfy a need for novelty.

Other examples of T3 include outbreaks of seriously gratuitous bitchiness and also the giggles, though rarely in the same person. I’ve observed that people who self-report as “happy drunks” tend to get the giggles, while those who become surly when drunk tend to be, well, surly T3 sufferers.

I also get trippingly tongue-tied and virtually illiterate.

I notice it when emailing and editing. I like to think I have a fair grasp of the English language, but the past couple months, re-reading what I’ve written, I’ll see mistakes I would simply never make “in the real world,” things like forgetting verbs in sentences or–shudder–confusing “your” with “you’re” and “to” with “too.”

Oh, the horror.

You can understand why editing a novel has been a frustrating pastime. Speaking is not much easier for me these days, either.

That, to me, is the most fascinating thing about T3 (which goes away once we’re off the Ice, fortunately). During my worst T3 moments, it’s as if my brain splits into two characters. One is footloose and fancy-free, skipping through tulips and singing in the rain, oblivious to the fact that I have an earbud in my mouth. The other is more pensive, aware that something is wrong, terribly wrong, but often unable to identify just what’s amiss.

Which brings me to my best (worst?) T3 moment of the season so far: earlier this week, waking up as usual, one minute before my alarm went off at 3:48 am, I stumbled to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, something I also do immediately before bed.

Looking in the mirror as I brushed my teeth, this is the actual conversation I had with myself in my head:

T3 me: Yay! As soon as I finish brushing my teeth I can go to bed! Awesome! I can’t wait! I’m so tired!

Still-lucid me: Actually…I have something to tell you, and I’m afraid you’re not going to like it. You’re not going to bed. You just got out of bed. Your day is just starting.

T3 me: But…but…NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

https://storiesthataretrue.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/great-moments-in-t3/